12 November 2009 3:25 PM

A number of correspondents took me up on my (though I say it myself) refreshingly frank admission that I don't know what will happen in Afghanistan if (or rather when) we leave that country, and by implication that I don't think that outcome, whatever it may be, will make much difference to us anyway.

Edward Doyle made a number of statements and assertions which I would ask him to substantiate. First, he refers to something called 'Al Qaeda', on the assumption that there exists a defined, centralised organisation going under this name. Can he tell me: a) where I can find AQ's statement of aims, as opposed to baseless journalistic and political assertions of what those aims are; b)where and when it was founded, and by whom; c) how does it raise and where does it bank or store its funds, and how and to whom does it disburse them? d) what specific aims, methods, etc allow an analyst to decide whether an Islamist terror group is or is not affiliated to AQ, as in ‘such and such an action “bears all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda” ‘. What precisely are these 'hallmarks'? In what way are they different from the modus operandi of any fanatical Islamist terror group, and what reason do we have to assume that they are linked, except in the vaguest sense, with the actions of any other such group, Islamist fanatics existing in places as distant and different as Bosnia, Leeds and the Philippines, and often being from differing and even hostile types of Islam? e) what its political front organisation is, and how we can tell objectively that statements or actions attributed to AQ by journalists or intelligence organisations or governments are in fact connected with it?

Just asking.

Mr Doyle then says that AQ has 'relocated to Somalia'. From where did it do this? How does he know? Who relocated? What does he think about the people who claim it is in fact in Pakistan's tribal areas? Are they mistaken? If so, on what basis are we to judge between him and those who disagree with him, and decide that he knows better. Or does it just depend on which paper he read most recently?

I really don't know what the increased use of the burqa (or more often in this country the hijab and niqab) has to do with this. It is undoubtedly so (the burqa is also almost universal in those parts of Afghanistan we claim to have liberated from Taliban oppression, I might add). That seems to me to have more to do with a general revival of the stricter versions of Sunni Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia during the last 30 years.

And then there's this statement: ‘To be sure, Afghanistan won't turn into a Westminster look-a-like democracy. But it could function in its own way as one, bringing stability to that part of Asia and the prospect of economic development. All this might lead to far better influences being exported from the region.’

Really? How, exactly? This is an enormous 'but if', around about the size of the Himalayas. Yet he skips lightly over it as if it were a sand-castle. Mr Doyle is arguing that men - his neighbours and mine - should be sent to fight and die for a cause. The burden's on him to show good reasons for this. This is a wishful and wholly unrealistic claim of the type I've mentioned before, which falls into the category I've previously mocked, that of ‘With a ladder and some glasses, you could see the Hackney Marshes, if it wasn't for the houses in between’. Indeed you could, if you had the ladder and the glasses, and it wasn't for the houses. But you haven't, and the houses are there. So you can't.

For example, if Afghanistan functions 'in its own way' which is as a village-based patriarchal clan system, then it won't be a parliamentary democracy. The two are mutually exclusive. See the recent laughable 'elections'.

He then says, quite reasonably: ’There is a real danger, in at least some parts of Britain, that they come to resemble Northern Ireland - opposed community groups with totally different values living cheek-by-jowl, presided over by a liberal elite who understand neither (and of course allowing the BNP to get a foothold all the while).’

But he follows this with a complete non sequitur: ‘Afghanistan is not a liberal war. It's about establishing or maintaining community cohesion over here.’

I am sorry. I simply and genuinely do not understand the connection. I cannot reply to Mr Doyle's reasoning, by which he presumably links his fear for the Ulsterisation of Britain and his belief that our military presence in Afghanistan will prevent this. I cannot reply to it because he appears to have left it out. Has he left it out because he forgot to put it in? Or has he left it out (as I rather suspect) because he has no idea what the connection is? If so, let me reassure him. Nor have I. But in that case, what is his point?

I am asked if anyone has ever been killed as a result of an eagle dropping a tortoise on his head. The Greek classical dramatist Aeschylus is said, by some accounts, to have died in this rather unpleasant and annoying (in that it is so unlikely and rather ridiculous) way. But I am not sure where the database is, that gives statistics on this risk in the present day. When I say that I am as likely to die by this method as I am to die by the hand of a terrorist, I am simply making a point that we are much too scared of terrorists, and that most of us are at no risk whatever of being killed or hurt by terrorist attacks, to which we over-react unreasonably and ludicrously. Compare the stoical response of the British population to the much greater risk from German bombing raids and guided missiles.

Dermot Doyle meanwhile rebukes me as follows: ’We would let so many people down, if we abandoned them to the uncertainty of a future controlled by a bunch of medieval hairy savages, with more wives than teeth, and the eventual consequences for ourselves. Islamic terrorism apart, the single issue of Taliban treatment of females of all ages is worthy of our intervention. We surely cannot sit back and allow a repeat of what we saw in Afghanistan, after the Russian propped regime collapsed.’

It is amusing to see him using the same excuse for our intervention in Afghanistan (emancipation of women) as was employed by Leonid Brezhnev's USSR in the 1970s, for their equally doomed intervention. It is also based on a misunderstanding of reality. Mr Doyle should look into the treatment of women in the non-Taliban areas of Afghanistan (including NGO-infested Kabul) run by our current 'friends', the corrupt and violent warlords who control the country under the figurehead presidency of Hamid Karzai. It does not differ much from the treatment of women under our former 'friends', the Mujahidin whom we financed and armed in their war against the 'progressive' Soviets, and whom we now call 'The Taleban' or 'Al Qaeda'. (People should get hold of the profane but clever and disturbing film Charlie Wilson's War to see the contradictory mess we have got ourselves into with our fantasies of intervention in this part of the world).

The age of imperialism is over. I might regret that, and in fact often do, but it is so. It is none of my business, even if I had the power to do anything about it, how other people wish to order their countries. Unselfishness and neighbourliness are of no worth if they are not effective. As the other Mr Doyle rightly points out, we have more urgent concerns, not being addressed, close to home (where charity begins). What's more, those aims would be achievable, if we tried, whereas cleaning up Afghanistan will be as easy as draining the Pacific with a teaspoon. Do these advocates of war ever look at a map, and see how tiny our presence is, in what is a small part of this rather large country? Do they notice how much of our time is spent in first taking, then abandoning, then retaking the same places?

We intervene in these countries not to do good, but to make ourselves feel good about ourselves. This is why I recommend idealists, who think they can liberate the womenfolk of Afghanistan, to form a volunteer international brigade and go and do it themselves. Actually, only two political figures have ever succeeded in de-Islamising any society. One was Kemal Ataturk, whose work in Turkey is now being busily undone by the AK party, with Western support. The other was Josef Stalin, who banned the veil and brought female equality across Central Asia and the Caucasus. Both men were utterly ruthless. Both, in the long term, failed in their objective. Do we wish to follow their examples? Do we think we shall succeed where they ultimately failed?

In a charming and civilised post, Tom Bumstead says that a linking organisation can be identified which connects terrorist actions in Britain with Afghanistan. Well, I'd subject such claims to the questions I ask above about 'Al Qaeda'. Those in the intelligence business both love constructing these spider's webs (usually post facto) and often need them to get the US government to finance and support their work (this is the fundamental reason behind the adoption of the name 'Al Qaeda' by American intelligence organisations). But let us assume that Mr Bumstead's connections are correct. He goes on: ‘Every real attack on the UK has a link with this group and the UK will not be safe from this particular threat until Al Mujahiroun has been shut down in the UK and in Afghanistan/Pakistan. You ask why a British presence in Helmand is required - the answer is that now that Pakistan is no longer so safe a haven for terrorism as it once was - Afghanistan could take its place unless protected. The forces of civilization need to be on both sides of the border to make this area safe. There is no other area in the world which could breed this kind of terrorism - this is not an idealistic swing in the dark against evil - it is surgically precise.’

Did you spot the sleight of hand? Yes, Mr Bumstead has rather cleverly invented a country . It is called ‘Afghanistan/Pakistan’. It is necessary for his argument because, if there are such 'training camps' and if they are important, and if they do play a role in terrorist actions in this country (an argument for another time) then the trouble is that they are in Pakistan, a member (I think, currently, though this comes and goes) of the Commonwealth with which we have diplomatic relations, and with which we are not at war, and to which we gave independence in 1947. We're not sending British troops there, I think. Pakistan is also incidentally a nuclear power, and would not take kindly to our invading it. Further, Pakistan was also until recently under the control of a military dictator, Pervez Musharraf, who we appear to have helped to destabilise (again in the name of 'democracy') in favour of a government which seems far less capable of controlling such things than he was. But that's by the way.

By pretending that Afghanistan and Pakistan are the same country, Mr Bumstead hopes to avoid my question, which he knows perfectly well is coming: ’How does the presence of our troops in Helmand province in Afghanistan in any way influence the existence or operation of Islamist training camps a long way away in Pakistan, a different country? Helmand, according to my map, is a good deal closer to Iran than it is to South Waziristan, the scene of Pakistan's battles with the Taleban (alias the Pashtuns). And that battle is all about the (British Imperial) misplacing of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, leaving large numbers of Pashtuns in a country they don't want to be in, a problem worsened in recent years by the many Pashtun refugees from the Russo-Afghan war, who have settled in Pakistan and so wield political influence there. I need from him simple, easy-to-follow factual explanations as to how this process - of British troops in Helmand preventing terror attacks on Britain - works. I can't make it out myself. And, once again, the burden of proof must rest on those who propose and defend this very bloody and costly military action. I don't have to prove it's futile (though 95 percent of military operations are) .They have to prove it's rational and effective.

One small non-Afghan point. A person styling himself 'Geraint' writes: ’Mr Hitchens's logic is rather faulty. He says the Tories should be destroyed but then says that the obvious successors like UKIP or the English Democrats are Cravat and Blazer brigade or too small. Yet a party starting from scratch would suffer the exact same problems. Besides which he lambasts UKIP yet at the same time praised Norman Tebbit for telling people to go vote for them at the Euro elections. Which is it Mr Hitchens you cannot have it both ways!’

I dealt with this only last week (Google the November 5 posting ‘Please stop trying to get me to endorse UKIP’. Or find it in the archives). UKIP is not 'the “obvious successor” ' to the Tories. As long as the Tories remain unsplit, no serious rival can develop. Any new party will be built out of the ruins of the Tories, and will have to win a large part of the vote which the Tories have hitherto counted upon. It will not be 'starting from scratch'. It will be reordering the conservative forces in this country which exist, but are currently trapped in impotence, or reduced to abstention. They are either too disillusioned to vote, or they are chained by habit and misplaced loyalty to the Useless Tories. That loyalty can only be shaken by a further Tory failure at the election, a real possibility (The last Tory score in the polls was 39 percent, of 67 percent of the electorate, which in reality means the support of about 25 percent of voters as a whole).

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29 August 2009 7:58 PM

I’m not sure I approve of cruel sex examinations for gruff-voiced female athletes.

But I really do think we need some sort of intrusive trousers-down test to discover whether Tory MPs really are conservatives. Most of them would fail it. Parliament is full of political hermaphrodites and neuters.

You can see it most clearly over Afghanistan. As we learned last week, the country is sick of this stupid, doomed adventure and of the Government’s cretinous fantasies about democracy and elections in that place.

Five men died to keep open a polling station that almost nobody dared go to, in an election whose result was fixed in advance. Yet the main ‘Opposition’ party is still uncritically committed to supporting our alleged mission in Helmand.

Where are the majority, who want to quit, supposed to turn?

But it’s not just that. Now, if a Tory frontbencher had said something conservative last week – that mass immigration should be stopped, that we should leave the EU, that criminals should be punished, that State schools should be allowed to select their pupils – there would have been a great fuss and the offender would have been fired by a righteous David Cameron.

But what if a Tory frontbencher had launched into a slurping song of praise to Anthony Blair, supposedly the enemy? Well, this actually happened, and there was no fuss at all.

Here is what that frontbencher said in an interview in a Left-wing newspaper: ‘He (Blair) is not as popular as he deserves to be and he’s emphatically not as popular within Labour as he deserves to be – amazing ingratitude on their part. But if someone were to look at some of the views that I’ve argued and say,

“Tony Blair said that,” it would be fatuous of me to deny it and dishonest, so therefore I may as well acknowledge it because it is true.’

The person speaking here is Michael Gove, Shadow Education Secretary, and so close to David Cameron (self-described ‘heir to Blair’) that his dubious expenses have been forgotten and forgiven. I might add that the two men also share a school run, as their children both go to a chic and oversubscribed little Church primary school, allowing them to pretend to themselves that State education is really OK. Their wives, sweetly, both pen articles for the local parish magazine.

I do keep trying to tell you. The ‘change’ offered to you by the Useless Tories is actually no change at all. Were we really better governed, or differently governed, under Anthony Blair than we are under Gordon Brown? Is a return to the days of Blair (but without all the funny money sloshing around) what you want? That’s what you’ll get from the Tories.

If you won’t take my word for it, take Michael Gove’s.

Bloated, self-indulgent and an enemy of Britain

How can it be that Edward Kennedy is treated, at his death, as if he were some kind of hero? What I say now is made necessary by the praise heaped on him. If his supporters had maintained a decent silence, as they should have done, there would be no need to say it.

But Mr Kennedy was not a hero, least of all here. He was, like his crooked, horrible father, a dedicated enemy of this country. He gave aid and comfort to the violent and unreasonable wing of Irish Republicanism and to the ignorant and sentimental strand of Irishry in America that does so much damage to Ireland itself.

He was, besides, guilty of many evil actions – both as an individual and as a politician. Without his sinister and bizarrely idealised family’s money and power to protect him, he would have gone to prison for his shameful part in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. And he would have been driven from public life for ever.

You might think, from the obituaries, that his role as a supporter of ‘liberal’ causes – including the killing of the unborn, specifically forbidden by the faith he claimed to espouse – had in some way atoned for his bloated, selfish private life. Surely the truth is a little different.

As a man who lived a life of gross self-indulgence, he could hardly oppose policies that condoned the same indulgence in others, could he?

Liberal, for certain. A lion? Hardly. Other creatures, with more legs, come to mind.

* We are urged to buy the ‘Royal Navy Sovereign of the Seas Chronograph’, which looks like a watch to me. It is an ‘official licensed product of the Royal Navy’, adorned with the White Ensign and the odd motto ‘Defend, Deter, Defeat’, which I have never seen in any of Her Majesty’s ships. The Defence Ministry confirms that the Navy really is lending its name to such promotions. And it says the watch is actually made in China.

* Ex-Communist ‘Doctor’ John Reid understandably hates being reminded of his 2006 Kabul remark (200 British deaths, three years, four months and one week ago) that ‘We would be perfectly happy to leave in three years’ time without firing one shot’. Actually, he said it three times, which suggests he was rather pleased with it – then. Now he’s gone whining to the BBC. And the BBC, which, of course, is totally unbiased, has responded sympathetically, issuing guidance on how the quotation is to be used and how there should be no ‘judgmental’ words. I wonder if they’ll do the same about their incessant misrepresentation of Lady Thatcher’s statement that ‘there is no such thing as society’ or Norman Tebbit’s never-uttered order to unemployed people to ‘get on their bikes’. Actually, I don’t wonder at all.

* And still we tiptoe round the truth: that we no longer govern ourselves. The Video Recordings Act of 1984, famously brought in to control ‘video nasties’, turns out not to be law at all. Well, that’s bad enough. But the real story is the reason for this mess.

The Act was not reported to the European Commission. So what? Well, the trouble is that it actually matters, because we have ceded ultimate authority to that secretive, despotic body. All the palaver about Royal Assent is just a pantomime for the tourists. The real power sits in a concrete block in Brussels, just as our real Supreme Court is in Luxembourg.

And they talk about making Britain more ‘democratic’ by abolishing the last independent voices in the House of Lords. If we want to be a real democracy, we have to start by leaving the EU.

16 May 2009 8:39 PM

A huge political earthquake took place this week. The media barely mentioned it. I’ll explain why in a minute, but first, I’ll tell you what it was in case you missed it.

Lord Tebbit, once Margaret Thatcher’s heir apparent (and oh, if only he had got the job), is a former Tory Cabinet Minister, a former Tory Party chairman, and one of the few major figures from the Thatcher era still in active politics.

Those of you who recall him being dug out of the Grand Hotel after the IRA Brighton bombing also know he is a man of immense stoicism and quiet bravery.

And on Monday – and again on Tuesday – he openly urged Conservative supporters not to vote for their party at the European ‘Parliament’ elections in June.

This is the biggest breaking of ranks by a major political figure since the ‘Gang of Four’ split from Labour – and so very nearly destroyed it – in 1981.

It is a measure of the combined disgust and despair of the genuinely conservative people of this country at the takeover of their lives by distant, patronising liberal smoothies.

One such smoothie is the Tory leader, David Cameron. He did not dare expel Lord Tebbit. He knew that if he tried, he would end up looking like one of those mouthy young muggers who finds himself unexpectedly in the gutter after trying to rob a leathery old war veteran. So instead he made some vaguely non-threatening remarks.

On the day this tremendous, genuinely important story broke, what did the media concentrate upon? Why, the alleged genius of Mr Cameron (a professional PR man, behaving predictably) in supposedly fighting the tide of sleaze in his own party.

What genius was that? Mr Cameron was surrounded by Shadow Ministers who had improperly spent taxpayers’ money on things they should quite obviously have paid for themselves. Did he sack them? No. He called them in, spoke to them sternly and told them to pay back the money.

Burglars and fraudulent businessmen should note that this option – pay it back and we’ll forget about it – is now available for wrongdoers. Or is it? Later he sacked a minor aide from a minor job.

Better than that, Mr Cameron presumably called himself in to his office, gave himself a good talking to, apologised to himself and then wrote out a cheque for £680 in repayment of money he admits that he improperly claimed for clearing wisteria from the chimney of his enchanting Oxfordshire home. So that’s all right then. Or is it? Why does it stop here? Why does the avalanche of shame and retribution come to an abrupt halt just before it reaches the shiny Cameron toecaps?

Isn’t this all a bit easy? The wealth expert Philip Beresford has estimated the combined fortune of David and Samantha Cameron at £30million. How did it ever cross the Tory leader’s mind that he was entitled to a penny of other people’s money for fixing his chimney?

Much more important, why should he expect hard-working couples, trying to get by in just one home on wages of £20,000 a year, to pay the mortgage on his so-called ‘cottage’, actually a spacious and expensive house in a charming, secluded part of the country?

Why does he have a mortgage on his second home at all, except to allow him to claim this money? When I put these questions to his spokesman, I received dead silence in return.

I will tell you why he gets away with this. This country’s Left-wing media classes have a great deal invested in Mr Cameron (as my new book The Broken Compass explains in detail). They want to reward him for destroying, crushing or isolating the last traces of true conservatism in his party.

They want him to be a second Blair, a smiling public-school frontman for the Left-wing ruination of this country.

Look at him, and look at Lord Tebbit. And ask yourself which you would rather follow, and which acted with more courage and resolve last week.

Why on earth should the discredited, useless, neutered Tories gain a single vote as a result of a scandal in which they themselves are prime offenders, from top to bottom, and from side to side?

This isn't airport security, it's triple-shotted stupidity

The mad dictatorship of the ‘security’ industry reached new depths of lunacy when a Japan-bound traveller was stopped at Heathrow for carrying a paperback thriller with a picture of a gun on the cover.When Carolyn Burgess placed her Robert B.

Parker novel, A Triple Shot Of Spenser, on the security tray she had it snatched away because it ‘might upset passengers’ on the plane. It had the image of a handgun on the front.

Eventually, after three officials had consulted each other on this serious matter, Mrs Burgess, a 58-year-old bank worker, was told she could take the book on the plane – provided she kept it in her bag and didn’t read it.

A spokesman for BAA attempted to explain this loopy behaviour by saying: ‘In certain circumstances, a passenger carrying an item which features an image or slogan that could be perceived as aggressive maybe asked to cover it up or remove it. Security officers are advised to use common sense when making these requests.’

At least the book wasn’t blown up in a controlled explosion.

One leader we can still respect

One good effect of the exposure of our ‘democratic’ representatives as greedy luxury-lovers may be a bit less silly mockery of the Royal Family. The Queen herself is a model of frugal living. And I’ve never believed that Prince Charles gets his toothpaste squeezed on to his brush by a footman. This change of climate might lead to the views of this often thoughtful and intensely patriotic man being taken a little more seriously. Why shouldn’t he challenge and criticise brutalist architects, who dwell in Georgian splendour themselves but force us to live and work in howling canyons of chipped, stained concrete (which looked so nice and artistic on the drawing board)?

* Of course the BBC has picked a Muslim as its new Head of Religion. But the chosen man, Aaqil Ahmed, should realise that he has been appointed because he is not a Christian, not because he is a Muslim. The God-hating establishment at the Corporation may actually be disappointed when it turns out that Mr Ahmed likes Christianity more than they do. I’m sure the BBC would rather have given the job to the obsessive anti-religious Professor Richard Dawkins, but didn’t quite dare.

* I see the British Association for Adoption and Fostering has ‘apologised’ for calling opponents of homosexual adoption ‘retarded homophobes’. But look carefully. The apology is only for the useof the word ‘retarded’. The disgusting, lying implication – that anyone who quite reasonably thinks children need both a mother and a father is moved by a ‘phobia’ against homosexual individuals – is unchanged. It was because of this furious, self-righteousness intolerance that the original statement came to be made. The day when people can be blackmailed for having conservative views on homosexuality cannot be far off. In some public-sector workplaces, where a word out of place on this subject can lead to the sack, it may already have arrived.

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13 May 2009 5:03 PM

Hardened as I am to the absurd behaviour of the semi-official media, I have seldom heard or seen such an amazing collective missing of a major story - and such a collective effort to protect a public figure and a political party from harm - as has taken place in the last three days.

On Monday, and then again on Tuesday, a former Chairman of the Conservative Party urged Conservative voters to withdraw their votes from that party at the coming European Parliament elections.

Nor was this some titular figure of whom nobody had heard. It was Lord Tebbit, once known as Norman Tebbit, a much-celebrated former Cabinet Minister who - if the IRA had not severely injured him and even more severely hurt his wife during their attempt to massacre the entire Cabinet in Brighton - might well have become Prime Minister. Many of you will remember the moving (and typical) stoicism he displayed as he was rescued, agonisingly, from the ruins on live TV. Thanks to that same stoicism, few of you will know how much pain, physical and emotional, he has endured since, not least because it was his wife who suffered so much more than he. So I'll just mention it here. You may have guessed that I rather like him.

In fact I would go so far as to say that Lord Tebbit is probably the single most significant survivor of the Thatcher government, and the man who speaks most cogently for the traditional Conservative voter, still loyal, but increasingly dismayed and puzzled by his party's direction.

His decision (taken, I have no doubt, after much thought) to urge Tories to withhold their votes from the Tory Party is news by anybody's measure. It is somebody important doing something he is a) not expected to do and b) not supposed to do. I can confess that I tried very hard to make him do something of the kind when I interviewed him for my Channel Four programme about David Cameron. He wouldn't oblige. You can criticise your party from within, but to urge people not to vote for it tends to be an unforgivable sin and an expulsion offence.

Nor is it the result of a secret briefing, which can later be denied. It was done, more than once, on the record. The Daily Mail carried it on Tuesday morning, and the BBC Radio Four Today programme then got him to repeat it on air in a recorded interview - though in a bizarre mess-up which has caused the BBC some embarrassment, 'Today' managed to cut a crucial section out of its recording - the section in which Lord Tebbit made it clear that he also strongly (and rightly) advised voters to stay away from the repellent BNP rabble.

Yes, of course I rejoiced over this. For the first time, a genuine crack has appeared in the facade of the Tory Party, which all insiders know to be profoundly split. It appeared on the same day that a Populus Poll in The Times showed Tory and Labour support plummeting side by side as a result of the expenses revelations engulfing both parties.

There's been a lot of silly argument (familiar to me) about whether Lord Tebbit was secretly urging people to vote for UKIP. Why do people find it so hard to believe that not voting for your former party is itself a powerful political act, highly effective on its own, and that no alternative vote is necessary? Not voting can be an extremely potent form of protest.

More interesting is his very narrow condition - that his advice should apply only to the European vote, not to local elections or to the next General Election. Others will have to judge, or Lord Tebbit will have to say, whether this is a sustainable position, and whether disgust can be contained in so small an area. In fact it's quite clever, since the EU elections, being held under proportional representation and in regions, are much more open to changes in public opinion than first-past-the-post polls. If the Tories do unexpectedly badly, UKIP will be the beneficiaries whether Tory dissidents vote for them or not, and Lord Tebbit will be able to take credit for it (and take the blame and fury from the Cameroons). Lord Tebbit cannot fail to realise that, however narrow his specific advice is, a trickle of this kind can swiftly turn into a torrent. In current conditions, when the credit and standing of all established MPs is exhausted, who can say where it might end?

Why was this enormous story not at the very least near the top of every bulletin and every front page yesterday? Why was the bizarre non-story, that David Cameron was (understandably but predictably) trying to minimise the damage done by the revelations of his own party's greed, both pushed to the front and treated with such reverence. Why wouldn't he? It would have been news if he hadn't. It wasn't news that he did. It's his job and he is, after all, a PR man by profession. But this predictable and obvious action was treated as if he had single-handedly rescued a group of menaced women from the hands of the Janjaweed in Darfur, or scaled Kanchenjunga without oxygen.

Even the left-wing 'Independent' carried a leading article on Wednesday saying how decisive etc Mr Cameron had been. Had he? Had he sacked anyone? No. Was he himself super-clean? No. He had, in effect, ordered himself to pay back money he shouldn't have claimed for repairs to his conservatory. Conservatory? Honestly, how could anyone have ever thought it was the taxpayer's job to fix his conservatory? I shall return to this at the weekend, but it simply isn't a surprising or unexpected story that the leader of a wounded party seeks to stem the damage done to it by a swirling scandal. Gordon Brown was likewise seeking to stem the damage done to his party, but his efforts were rightly considered to be of minor importance and not specially impressive. Nor were Mr Cameron's. So why the difference in coverage?

My new book 'The Broken Compass', explains how political journalism operates in this country, and I do urge those who are interested to get hold of a copy. But in brief, two forces are operating here. One, the liberal elite actively wish for a Tory government, which they see as the best hope of safeguarding the left-wing policies of Blairism and two, many ambitious journalists have invested a great deal of time, and many lunches, in making close contacts with the Tory leadership. Now they want their pay-off, in the form of a future close relationship with a Tory government.

The other interesting story about Norman Tebbit is: ‘Why didn't David Cameron move to expel or at least suspend him from the Conservative Party?’

This is not explored because the answer is: ‘He didn't dare.’ And journalists in the liberal elite don't want to write such a story, as it reflects discredit on their chosen hero. Remember Michael Howard's disgraceful sacking of Howard Flight, or Mr Cameron's equally wrong dismissal of Patrick Mercer from his front bench, (both recently defended to me, very vigorously, by a certain Cameroon A-List candidate)? Norman Tebbit is much bigger than them, and remains a canny and quick-thinking political operator. In any fight between them, Cameron would end up looking like a callow teenager who'd tried to mug an elderly war veteran and been beaten off with a few blows of an umbrella. Also the truth - that Mr Cameron has hijacked the Tory Party for the liberal cause - would be shockingly evident. In my view, Lord Tebbit could actually have gone quite a lot further and got away with it. I hope he does.

31 May 2006 12:07 PM

I remember back in the dying years of the Major government, trying to argue that Tory sleaze wasn't a reason to vote Labour. Look, I pointed out, all governments will inevitably become corrupt if they are in office for long enough. Politicians are like everyone else, some of them cannot resist temptation. The Tories had been in power for so long because the opposition Labour Party had been unelectable - which wasn't the Tories' fault .

It was very difficult to get a hearing for this rather obvious point. I added that it would not be long before we had episodes of Labour sleaze, and I was proved right in about five minutes, even faster than I had expected. Did it make any difference? No, Labour's support was barely affected, and endless episodes of bungling and dubious dealing certainly didn't benefit the Tories.

Anyway, back before May 1997, there was a limit to how much effort anyone could be bothered to make to defend John Major's Tories. I knew that New Labour would, in some ways, be significantly worse because it knew more or less what it was doing, whereas the Major government surrendered to political correctness and egalitarianism because it had no ideas of its own. But I also knew that in many ways it would be much the same and that in the long run there was little to hope for. No party stood for an independent, properly-run Britain. It was a choice of dark grey versus even darker grey, with no good guys available, and all the bad guys pretending to be good.

And so it went on, as 'Whiter than White' Labour rapidly proved to be, in truth, 'greyer than grey' . There were sex scandals, money scandals, incompetence scandals. Ministers resigned. Labour carried on unhurt, and won general elections without any difficulty.

I came to the conclusion that 'sleaze' had merely been a pretext. People who had simply hated the Tories, but were slightly ashamed of having no better reason for voting Labour, had used 'sleaze' as the public excuse for what they were going to do anyway. They told pollsters, work colleagues and acquaintances that it was what had turned them against the Tories.

But in fact it was a tribal rage, a rage they were uneasy about, because they knew it was unreasonable, and so had to camouflage. That's why, despite being supposedly so outraged by Tory sleaze, they couldn't care less about Labour sleaze. Now I suspect something of the kind is happening again. As some of you have pointed out, sheer disgust with the Blair government might - just possibly - lift Dave Cameron into Downing Street, not because of who or what he is, or because of his non-existent policies, but simply because he isn't Anthony Blair.

I enjoyed John Prescott's deflation as much as anyone else - though I view him as a deadly serious politician, not a joke - but I would hate it if Mr Prescott's croquet, or his other more personal games, ended up helping the Useless Tories.

For we do now have an opportunity - which will not come again - of forcing the grey out of British politics. If the Tories fail again at the next election, surely everyone will realise that they are finished, and begin to look elsewhere. And, as it happens, David Cameron IS Anthony Blair, just as Anthony Blair IS John Major.

One contributor objected to my argument that we have had two John Major governments, under Mr Major and Mr Clair, and do not need a third under Mr Blameron. He said it was unfair to Mr Major, which only goes to show how distance lends enchantment to the view. Surely the Major government, hopeless on crime, destructive on education, pitifully weak in defence of Britain, ferocious only when attacking honest patriots and surrendering to Brussels, was one of the worst in our history?

One of the most significant proofs of the continuity of Major, Blair and Cameron is that all three of these men have had the keen support of Michael Heseltine, one of the most significant figures in British politics. (Don't try to wriggle out of this, Tarzan, some of us remember Princess Tony parading you as a supporter of the European Union at the 'Britain in Europe' launch in London on October, 14 1999). In fact, I would ask all those who see Dave Cameron as a saviour to ask themselves if they are not worried by Lord Heseltine's obvious enthusiasm for this supposedly Eurosceptic young smoothie.

Why do I say this? Because Mr Heseltine, that ferocious Euro-fanatic, is the personal embodiment of the great putsch against Margaret Thatcher in 1990, when the united liberal elite chucked her out of Downing Street. There's a convenient myth that this was all because of the 'Poll Tax', but I don't believe it. The Poll Tax would have suited quite a lot of people who now suffer badly under the Council Tax, and the supposed 'Poll Tax riots' were just the usual rentacrowd, not a great popular movement.

No, Mrs Thatcher was removed because she had - finally - understood what was going on. I am not one of her uncritical admirers. She campaigned for a 'Yes' in the rigged EU referendum in 1975. She gave up huge chunks of our national veto in negotiating the 'Single European Act' ten years later. She was browbeaten into joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the decision that really destroyed her party. But then she began to grasp that real nature of the menace to our independence, in her speech at Bruges and her famous "No! No! No!" declaration against Euro-power, in the Commons.

At that point, the ruling elite moved against her. And all British politics since December 1990 has been dominated by men who learned the lesson of those melodramatic days - that the most dangerous thing a British political leader can do is to question our absorption into the EU. No wonder. There is no more important issue. Any serious independent action - on law and justice, on migration - would immediately challenge the EU. In fact it is a symbol and symptom of independent thought on almost anything.

Interestingly, Norman Tebbit, one of the few British conservative politicians of unflinching integrity, recently broke with that consensus. He urged the repeal of the 1972 Act which made British law subservient to European Law - an action that would take us out of the EU. So far as I know he is the only political figure of such seniority to take this position. Nobody has attacked him, probably because it is risky to do so (he bites) , but then again, nobody has rushed to his support. His political generation is now in exile in the House of Lords, and the modernised Tories seem to lack any young anti-EU spirits on the back or front benches in the Commons.

They are more interested in the sex war, or the sexuality war. Why? Because for the most part the new breed of Tories reckon the European issue is settled. In fact, I think many of them would secretly be pleased if the remaining problems - the abolition of sterling, the end of a specifically English legal system - could be achieved by Labour before they get back into office.

That way they can pretend to oppose them without any risk of actually defeating them. And an election fought around the issue of Labour sleaze and sloth would also help them cruise to office without making any clear policy pronouncements about anything important, which is obviously their plan anyway. And then how long would it be before a Tory minister was caught being sleazy? Elections fought on sleaze are a guaranteed way of ensuring that we stay as badly-governed as ever. Look out. Michael Heseltine is smiling.